Three female WWF volunteers who were kidnapped by armed militants earlier this week while working at a national park in northeast India have been freed, officials said Wednesday.
Three male environmental workers also abducted remain missing, according to AFP.

A second intense winter storm churned through the heart of the U.S. Wednesday, dumping more than a foot of snow on the nation's winter-weary midsection.
Barreling through the central Plains and Midwest as residents were digging out from last week's powerful blizzard, the system unleashed high winds and up to 12 inches of snow on parts of Oklahoma, CNN reports.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a preliminary version of a plan to study the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water.
Hydraulic fracturing, known as "fracking," is a natural gas drilling technique that creates fragmentation in reservoir rock formations. Using pressurized water and chemicals, drillers bore deep underground to release gas or oil from rocks. Opponents of the process say that it contaminates ground water and poses serious health and environmental risks.

The Coast Guard worked to clean up 2,100 gallons of an oil byproduct from the Mississippi River after a tow boat and a barge collided Sunday morning.
Louisiana officials said Monday that most of the oil had been contained.

The UN on Tuesday commended Pakistan for electively making efforts to curb heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.
Though still shaken by recent widespread flooding, the nation has taken steps toward combatting climate change by restricting emissions in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol.

A Hungarian aluminum plant that caused a massive spill of red sludge in October is still producing poisonous substances that endanger a local river, Greenpeace said Tuesday.
Urging the European Union to intervene, the international environmental protection organization said MAL AG is illegally disposing of red mud by delivering it directly into the river Marcal.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that it will conduct a study of Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed to assess the potential impact of development projects on the area's commercial sockeye salmon fishery.
The agency said it decided to perform the scientific review after being petitioned by the Bristol Bay Native Corp. and nine Alaska native tribes, which voiced concerns over the Pebble Mine development project.

An upcoming proposal by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that will mandate air pollution laws for industrial facilities could create 1.5 million jobs over the next five years, according to a new report.
The study by Ceres and the Political Economy Research Institute claims that the new federal regulations will create engineering, construction and pipefitting positions as facilities work to meet pollution standards and as older, inefficient plants are dismantled.

Six wildlife volunteers working for the WWF in eastern India have been kidnapped by armed militants, Indian police said Monday.
The abductions from Manas national park in the state of Assam occurred Sunday, just a few hours after Bodo tribal groups announced their decision to renew their campaign for a separate state, the BBC reports.

The U.S. federal government announced Wednesday that it plans to pump $50 million into expediting the development of offshore wind farms.
With President Barack Obama's goal of using 80 percent clean energy in the U.S. by 2035 looming on the horizon, the Department of Energy hopes to issue wind farm leases off the coasts of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey by the end of 2011.